March 29, 2004

"Caring" EOIR Immigration Judge Lets Convicted Child Molester Keep Green Card

(Also by Juan Mann: An American Mother Blows The Whistle On A Criminal Alien—And The EOIR .)

A Department of Justice immigration judge in Newark, N.J. who allowed a convicted child molester to keep his "green card" and remain in the U.S. was cleared of any wrongdoing by a superior in the wake of a complaint filed by the victim’s mother.

The superior described the judge’s conduct as—"caring"!

As I previously reported, Loretta Schloerb’s daughter was molested by an uncle through marriage, who is a permanent resident alien. Eight years after his 1995 conviction for endangering the welfare of a child through sexual conduct, Jose Barrios Castilla was placed in removal proceedings before immigration judge William K. Strasser of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

Loretta and her daughter both testified against Barrios Castilla on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at the EOIR Immigration Court hearings. On December 5, 2003, the immigration judge granted an entirely discretionary form of relief to Barrios Castilla, allowing him to keep his resident alien status and remain in the United States.

The DHS appealed the ruling to the EOIR’s Board of Immigration Appeals, and Loretta filed a complaint to the EOIR’s Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy.

Loretta now shares the EOIR’s response:

"I just received a letter from [Assistant Chief] Immigration Judge Gail Padgett regarding the complaint that I filed against Immigration Judge William Strasser.

"She said that after listening to 15 hours of testimony from four days of the immigration hearing she totally disagreed with me regarding the judge's behavior and comments. She said he did what he had to do to make a fair decision –granting the pedophile relief – that's a fair decision?

"Needless to say I am disappointed and angry.

"She said she felt the judge was professional, understanding and caring, knowing how difficult this was for us to testify. She also said that this was the price you pay when you are a witness giving testimony – then she thanked me for taking interest in our judicial system.

“[M]aybe Judge Padgett is just protecting one of her own. I'm not sure what I want to do at this time. My daughter doesn't even want to read the letter. My younger daughter, who was a victim as well, feels the same way I do – what are we not getting?

"So who gets the fairest deal here, the victim or the criminal? I think I finally get it.

My response: Please take heart, Loretta. You’re not alone here.

Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin gets it. Thirty-year U.S. Border Patrolman John W. Slagle got it . . . I get it, and many VDARE.com readers get it too.

And as word spreads about the EOIR and the despicable clandestine permanent amnesty that it administers, many more come to know the truth about the federal immigration bureaucracy.

I’ve distilled a few key points to remember about this travesty:

It took eight years before the federal government took any steps whatsoever to deport this criminal alien child molester. And after an immigration inspector (at a chance meeting) finally put two and two together—that the convicted criminal in front of him was an alien removable under the Immigration Act—the original case was all but cold, making it easier for a "caring" EOIR immigration judge to step in years after the fact and nullify deportation.

No matter how much publicity Secretario Ridge’s newly-renamed Immigration and Naturalization Service generates for its Operation Predator anti-child molester initiative—and no matter how many foreign predators it arrests on our shores—as long as the EOIR is the agency that decides the outcome, its "caring" immigration judges will always be the weakest link in the chain.

After taking the extraordinary step of testifying against the alien who molested her daughter, Loretta still could not dissuade the "caring" immigration judge from following the EOIR’s bureaucratic inertial impulse of granting relief under one of the many escape valves from deportation built into the Immigration Act.

As long as the deportation of illegal aliens and criminal alien residents is handled by a litigation bureaucracy – staffed with "caring" government employees from the EOIR wearing robes – rather than by summary removal, federal immigration law enforcement will remain a charade.

Please consider thanking Loretta and her family for their courage, and for sharing their story. [E-mail her your encouragement at: Schloerbski@msn.com]

Their efforts to expose this travesty must not be in vain.

Juan Mann [send him email] is a lawyer and the proprietor of DeportAliens.com.